Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual ExperiencesRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
History
Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
Canada -- Description and travel; Canada -- Emigration and immigration
It consists of a railway-station and an assemblage of wooden huts and
shops, which have all been called into existence within the last twelve
months. It boasts a weekly organ (such as it is), two or three places of
worship, one or two billiard-rooms, and a post-office—not a tent, as in
some parts of the country in which I have been, but a real wooden-house.
The shopkeepers seem to have nothing to do, and the pigs perambulate the
streets, evidently enjoying the fine freedom allowed them in this part of
the world. There are at this time about 700 or 800 settlers, some of the
farmers who came out last year having moved further west.
I am writing in the railway-station, in the waiting-rooms of which are
many farmers, all on their way to Calgary—for which place, also, I am
bound, expecting to start at the very inconvenient hour of two p.m.
The scene, as I sit, is not cheering. Far as the eye can reach there is
the prairie. It was the same all the way from Winnipeg. It will be the
same all the way to Calgary, some 400 or 500 miles hence. It is
intensely hot, and men and women sit in the open air, under such shade as
the wooden houses afford. It is intensely cold in the winter. Not a
tree is to be seen, or a hill, or a farmhouse; nothing to relieve the
monotony of the sea of grass land on every side, except here and there a
prairie fire—the first step to be taken before the farmer commences the
cultivation of the soil; and I must own a prairie fire by night is rather
a pretty sight.
I parted last night with a General and his wife, who have come to settle
about forty miles off. At present he and his family have no fresh meat,
and he has to make an arrangement with a Brandon butcher, about a hundred
and fifty miles off, to supply him with a Sunday joint. Tinned meats his
family have tried, and he has got with him a fresh joint of meat, which
he purchased in Winnipeg; but there are prairie chickens always to be
had, and in some places, as we came along, we saw an abundance of wild
ducks on the Assiniboine River, and in swamps, over which we rushed in
the Pullman car.
This luxury cannot be expected in Moose Jaw. Here there is no water at
all. Last year the farmers had no rain, and they fear they will have
none now. As it is, the prairie begins to look a little scorched. I
should be loth to spend the remainder of my days here; but a farmer may
make a living, and so may a farm-labourer. As to any other class of
people here, there is no opening at all. The town is full of
shopkeepers, barristers, auctioneers, and dealers. Mechanics who come
out will starve. When the land around is taken up they will have a
chance, but not till then.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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